Talk:Standards of evidence

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The part of this article from "Common evidence standards for skeptics" to "Evidence in United States law" probably should not be left unchallenged, but I am not clear how the overall article is intended. Is it just "this and that" or "this" and why it is silly? Tom Butler 16:01, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

This article is how evidence standards should apply to all frontier subjects such as homeopathy and UFOs and other paranormal subjects. It is a general article. Since it is a general, not a signed article or viewpoint-piece, and has been left in mainspace, it should be edited as a general article. Thus its viewpoint should be about the agreed-upon basics, in this case standard science. I think you will interpret that to mean that there is something different about science relative to frontier thought and mainstream thought. I disagree. There may be special needs, for instance taking account of "nonlocal influence." But this does not have any effect on empirical learning or the general methods which we use to verify it. It would have some effect on the specific methods, but in the end we would end up with support for hypotheses which any informed scientist would accept. I would also like to keep the article as non-technical as possible. We are involved in speaking to the less technically inclined members of the skeptical and frontier communities, which in large part drive the debates. So we have to maintain a tone they can understand. Any thoughts which are true dissents here, and not just corrections or expansions or applications of science to frontier though can be put in other paragraphs, sections, or articles, and copy editing or strengthening of all points is encouraged. P^uR^{ple scissor}ʇɐןʞ 18:24, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Fair enough. We will keep it simple and not argue with mainstream science.

You said that, "We are involved in speaking to the less technically inclined members of the skeptical and frontier communities, which in large part drive the debates." It is such "less technically inclined membership" that has silenced all of our critical thinkers in the Idea Exchange. Tom Butler 23:05, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes, but I did not mean quite that technically disinclined, I think (though I have never seen that board). It is fine to have technical articles, but I would hope that general articles on subjects as easy as this could be understood easily by a college student. I do think that we should argue with mainstream science. But Science is something I have been meaning to write a little bit about: science is any empirical process for finding and explaining reality and verifying your knowledge. Any process that works.

We need to write about any difference between science done for mainstream phenomena versus frontier phenomena. Now, a question for you: is there a difference in science between the two, or is there a difference in protocols due to the nature of phenomena? You already have a section in the article which could be used to question mainstream science. But see, what you have is a different section for a different view, which is exactly right. I would think you would focus on differences between standard and frontier science in that section, or else merge that section with the first if there are no real differences. Although what you have there looks like "how do we apply the above standards to frontier subjects," which is also valuable. Of course we want to argue.

Go ahead and challenge, and contrast the views of the mainstream and fringe science. If the views in the first part of the article are not really the mainstream views, then they should probably be edited to be so. This started out as a skeptical response to the Richard Dawkins article (although I do not see how it applies). P^uR^{ple scissor}ʇɐןʞ 23:28, 10 August 2009 (UTC)